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In the City of Angels, people are known for changing their name (aka “rebranding”) all of the time. Archibald Leach became Cary Grant. Sean Combs went from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy. And Prince became “The Artist Formerly Known As Prince” (yup, for a while his name was symbol) and then thankfully finally went back to Prince.

Well, having undergone an identity shift, the 8-year-old Santa Monica 5000 re-emerged this past Sunday as the newly christened Santa Monica RunFEST. I’m happy to say that even with the name change, the race retained its charm. With a myriad of distances to choose from: a 10K, 5K, untimed 5K “retro themed run,” and a family friendly 3K, around 2000 people laced up their running shoes for some seaside scampering. This year I ran the 10K for the third time and joined 545 other finishers for a fun 6.2 mile jaunt through Santa Monica.

Like this:

Sandwiched between last week’s Long Beach Half Marathon and next week’s LA Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon was today’s Santa Monica RunFEST 10K (formerly known as the Santa Monica 5000).

After my less than stellar showing at Long Beach, I was hoping to rebound during this 6.2 mile jaunt around Santa Monica.

Thumbs up in Santa Monica!

In short, I was quite happy with today’s race.

The weather was perfect and I got a chance to chat up a few people before the race.

Now I wasn’t feeling 100% before the race; my stomach felt a little rumbly and I didn’t get as much sleep as I would have liked the last two nights.

But once the horn went off and I cranked up the tunes, I managed to put my rumbly tummy out of my head.

Now while I was just hoping to have a fun run, I did have some time goals in the back of my head (damn that competitive side of me).

First off, I wanted to see if I could better my Santa Monica 5000 “best” time of 58:57. And in the deep recesses of my cabeza, I was thinking maybe I could even top my 10K PR (56:56) set at this year’s Peachtree Road Race… or perhaps even break the 9:00 min/mile mark for a 10K.